Staged at The George Economou Collection in Athens, a new show co-curated by the author captures a sense of our fledgling but already turbo-charged century, featuring works by David Hockney, Jenny Saville, David Hammons and Louise Bourgeois and more

“To look through the work they built together is to understand what the great collectors call grace,” says Hilton Als, on the contemporary art assembled by Greek art collector George Economou, his daughter Alexandra and collection director Skarlet Smatana. For Als, their work brings to mind the great 20th-century patrons John and Dominique de Menil, whose love of art and artists was like “an act of faith”. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author is in Athens for the opening of an exhibition which he co-curated with Hammer Museum director emeritus Ann Philbin alongside Smatana to capture a sense of our fledgling but already turbo-charged century. Taken entirely from works in the collection, The Way We Live Now is titled after Anthony Trollope’s 1875 anatomy of a society drunk on the pursuit of capital and enthusiastic to unravel.